Pastoral scene

Tim has gone this week to Adelaide for an art fest and there is consequently no lessons. Technically I am on break but was itching to paint another country scene. This one is a composite of various photos taken of the country around Harden.


The cows are our friends' but the background was of the paddock and hills on our way to Canberra. Grasslands is a dominant theme in this part of the world. I think that farmers are lucky that so much natural beauty surrounds them. Meantime Roger has completed his course on picture framing. I have so many things for him to frame that he won't know where to start. We have reached a point where the pictures are filling up all available wall space in our house. I think I shall rotate the art work as I go with older ones stored (where??)

Haystacks in the country

Our good friends live in the country near Young and on our visit after Christmas I was unsuccessful in getting art on paper but did get some photos. The country is beautiful. They received rain when we arrived and so there was lots of green. The vastness and isolation amazes me.


We drove past these haystacks dotted around the paddocks. Perhaps the farmers do gather them eventually but they look surrealistic in the land. This was especially so where there were undulating hills. As usual Tim was his efferverescent self. The grass in the foreground is applied with a palette knife, paint brush and speckled. I never knew there were so many means to getting a paint effect!

Rough seas

This week I chose another aspect of the ocean to attempt: rough sea with lots of movement and foam. Roger and I had been for a walk from Coogee to Clovelly and walked through the baths at North Coogee. I hadn't been there before and was amazed to see these brave or fool hardy souls diving in and swimming to the rocks. That is Roger on the left with his hat on.


There was another girl who was too terrified to join her friends. Wedding cake island is in the distance. Tim says that I'm doing the right thing by exploring one subject. However next week I will get into country landscape. What I'm amazed by is the speed that I've been painting. Every Tuesday I emerge with a painting after 4 hours effort. I often feel drained but exulted that I managed to get so far. When I'm home I tend to potter around, spend lots of time thinking about composition, stop often for breaks, etc. Rarely was I able to complete anything in a day! I believe that speed is probably good as if it is doomed to fail it would be evident after 4 hours.

Swimmer and water play

Today at the acrylic studio I took the problem of painting water to Tim. I used a photo of a swimmer in the ocean from Sally's blog as reference. The results were unexpectedly good. Of course I asked Tim numerous questions about colours and mixing. Tim has a great box of paints and rather than teaching us to mix he said to use those. But I wasn't going to purchase 20 new colours to reproduce the same results at home! He showed me a few mixes and I had to get phalto green to mix cobalt.

Great Swimming Website

I accidentally found this great website of a swimmer/ photographer on blogger called Swim Sally Swim. She has some fantastic photos of rockpools, pools, beaches and other swimming spots in Sydney, Australia and all over the world (she appears to be well travelled). Her website is: swimsallyswim. I love her photos and observations. Have a look.

Rockpool at Little Bay

For a long time now, I've been fascinated by rockpools. Sydney rockpools are beautiful because of the Hawkesbury sandstone. However I have struggled to produce a likeness. Things submerged look different but how to represent them? This was the problem I brought to Tim Gratten, artist and tutor at Art Est. Here is his response.


The colours I needed were yellow oxide and red oxide to render the stones. The submerged rocks had a wash of the blue over it. I was pleased with the results. Here is a close up.